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The REThink project aims at responding to the European urge of improving children and adolescents’ access to evidence-based
mental health interventions. The goal of the project is to design, develop, and evaluate a therapeutic video game accessible
online, meant to be used primarily as a standalone application to promote emotional resilience in children and
adolescents. The game will be based on the RETMAN character, having its own stories, belonging to tested packages of
cognitive-behavioral therapy for promoting child and adolescent mental health (i.e., Rational Emotive Behavioral Education).

Based on the interlinked efforts of a multi-disciplinary team of mental health professionals and engineers, we expect the
end-result to be a cost-effective tool for mental health promotion in children and adolescents.

There is a global concern for child and adolescent mental health, with emotional disorders being among the most frequent and
persistent conditions. While it is known that adolescents are major computer and technology gadget users, no evidence-based
therapeutic online games exist for preventing emotional disorders and promote their well-being. Few therapeutic videogames are
mentioned in the literature, but most of them are not based on the best available protocols. Furthermore, little preliminary
data is available for their effects, and they are used only within therapy sessions (as they are not designed to be standalone
applications for promoting resilience). These weaknesses significantly lower their accessibility and potential efficiency in
terms of fostering resilience; in addition, they hinder the integration of some aspects found to be very attractive by children
and adolescents, like multiplayer options.

The REThink project offers a unique opportunity to apply state-of-the art scientific knowledge to promote emotional
resilience in youth, by means of a commercial innovative product. The end-product is designed to reach a large number of
youths especially outside of the clinical context, which is in line with recent WHO and UNICEF recommendations.

The project is funded by The Executive Agency for Higher Education, Research, Development and Innovation Funding (UEFISCDI) through
the Partnerships program. The project is coordinated by the Babes-Bolyai University in partnership with PixelData enterprise.
The European Coaching Center, is a research unit of the Department of
Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, dedicated to advancement of coaching and the team of the partner- technicians,
responsible with the software implementation of the therapeutic game. The project implementation timeline
is July 2014 - December 2016.

How can I get involved?

This initiative meets an imperative need for preventing emotional disorders and promoting children and adolescents well-being.
We would like to have the end-users of the project close during the implementation and appreciate their support and active
involvement in this project.

You can get involved in supporting the project through the following actions:

Disseminating the project website among your friends, children and adolescents.

Accessing and answering to our questionnaires.

Sending us feedback about this project initiative and information materials on the site. Observations, comments, and your suggestions are very valuable optimizing our approach to better fit youth needs.